Is there any differences between the recognition and production of finger numeral representations?

Resum

In the past few years, there has been an increasing interest in analysing the connection between finger processing and the development of various numericalskills (Andres et al., 2008; Fayol y Seron, 2005). Some studies have focused in children’s recognition of finger numeral representations presented in a canonicaland non-canonical way, whereas other studies have analysed the production of these finger representations (Gunderson et al., 2015; Nicoladis et al., 2010,2018). However, no study has explored the differences between recognition and representation and their relation with mathematics achievement. Therefore, theaim of this study is to analyse the differences in response time and accuracy between two tasks of finger processing (recognition and reproduction), and explorewhether kindergarteners’ abilities in finger processing is related to mathematics achievement. Results show that differences between tasks are only found inresponse time (not in accuracy), being children faster in reproducing finger representations rather than in recognizing them. Nevertheless, the variable thatseem to influence mathematics achievement above the influence of domain general variables is the recognition of finger representations. This finding wouldsupport the use of finger recognition task in educational practice at early ages.